Finding Fun Again
Bring balance, energy, and joy into your life.
“So…what do you do for fun?” a guy asked me over drinks. I paused, unsure how to answer. Fun and I have a complicated relationship.
I realized this when I got divorced. I was in a low place, completely exhausted and had no clue what I considered fun anymore. I had let others decide what I would do for fun for most of my adult life, from college to marriage. In my life at that point, fun was pretty much centered around my kids. I’d have to figure out what I liked to do for fun on my own terms, now.
I realized that this life-giving ingredient had been absent on an impromptu trip to Spain in 2018 with Kady (seen below, whispering in a giant baby’s ear in Madrid). While I’m just not the silly, cut-up type, Kady has no trouble finding fun and making herself, as well as others, laugh. This doesn’t come as naturally to me. Fun doesn’t have to mean funny, social, or even exciting. It just means you are finding a sense of delight in an experience. Something that makes your heart smile. It looks different for everyone, and we all need our own version of it.
With all there is to sort out after divorce, there are some really important reasons to make figuring out fun and what brings you joy a PRIORITY.
You see, according to experts, divorce is the second most stressful life event (as if we didn’t know that from experience!). Stress messes up the balance of our neurotransmitters, like cortisol and noradrenaline, and our hormones, which are already fluctuating from perimenopause or menopause. Stress increases cortisol resulting in higher blood pressure and blood sugar, weight gain, and thyroid imbalances. In addition to amping up feel good hormones like dopamine and serotonin, doing things you enjoy (ie. having fun!) reduces cortisol, and in the long term will reduce your risk of heart disease and stroke (two of the top causes of death for women) as well as thwarting diabetes, thyroid conditions, and breast cancer. Fun can bring hormones back toward balance, so this is a health-related win-win for women post-divorce.
Joy-inducing experiences interrupt the racing thoughts running through our minds—that damn ticker tape—by bringing us into the present. With less ticker tape time and more fun time, we sleep better, and then we are nicer to the people in our lives, and that just feels better for everyone.
Fun and old-fashioned silliness comes more naturally to some than others.
As you consider how to build fun back into your life, maybe think back to a previous part of your life that was fun. My own starting point was realizing that although I had considered my ex “the fun one,” I was a pretty fun mom. As a stay-at-home mom, I had permission to play with my kids AND it was part of my job description. We went on field trips exploring the city, the park, museums, playgrounds, picnics, public art. We made art weekly, read and laughed, sang and danced, did puzzles and acted silly. I always had lots of kids at my house for games, movies, art, laughter, snacks, and sleepovers. Back then so much of what I did with them was fun to me and it brought me so. much. joy!
There wasn’t a checkbox on my to-do list for fun now that my kids were older. Fun felt frivolous, indulgent, and a distraction from being productive rather than a necessary ingredient to provide balance, energy, and joy. Read that again … fun is a necessary ingredient to provide balance, energy, and joy.
I realized only I could no longer choose to deprive myself from the life-giving, energizing nourishment that fun provided.
I needed to amend my to-do list to include activities that bring me joy and make it a priority. Life is not just about crossing things off the never-ending list, but something to be cherished and enjoyed. Having fun makes new memories, reduces negative emotions, brings us into the present, and gives us energy. Joy helped me step toward a new and better life.
I realized that I had lots of clues about what I thought was fun. I had created the fun all those years with my kids doing all the things that I like to do!
Spending time with my kids is neither the only nor necessary ingredient. My willingness to give myself permission to create fun is all that is required.
Now, I keep a list of things I like to do on my phone, which might sound odd, but sometimes I need help remembering that there are small things that I can do every day that bring me joy, like putting on a song to sing or dancing in the kitchen. I have learned to prioritize planning ahead for “fun” so it doesn’t get swept away in favor of something more practical. To get out of my comfort zone to ask others to do something with me. To put money aside and give myself permission to spend it on big things like my 2018 trip to Spain with Kady. If we hadn’t taken that trip, GoodBetterNext might not be a part of my own Next chapter.
What fun and adventures will be a part of your Next chapter? Where can you bring FUN and JOY into your life? What is on your own list of things that lighten up your life and lift weight off of your shoulders? We invite you to contribute a story about how you rediscovered your sense of joy, fun, or adventure on our Get Involved page.